'The Tale of Despereaux': Such the Disappointment 

By Martha Brockenbrough
MSN Cinemama

Get showtimes, tickets, interviews and more at MSN Movies

Anyone who's read "The Tale of Despereaux" by Kate DiCamillo will immediately recognize the line, "It is such the disappointment."

It's spoken by the mother of the hero, Despereaux Tilling, after she takes a look at the undersized, over-eared mouse she's just borne. And it could just as succinctly sum up the overall effect of the movie.

Neither this key line nor the mother's comical French accent make an appearance onscreen, although there is a new character made entirely of vegetables who speaks in an Italian accent. And that is a big part of the problem. The movie doesn't honor the darkness of the book, nor its light, and the changes made during the adaptation don't make for a better -- or even particularly coherent -- story.

Still, if you are the sort of person who likes to see a vegetable man who exists for no good reason (except that someone wanted to make an homage to Italian portrait artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo), then "Despereaux" might just be the holiday movie you were waiting for.

Otherwise, the movie is a bit of a mess. An attractive mess -- beautifully animated, with a capable cast --but nonetheless a mess that will likely confuse kids and fail to dazzle their parents.

Here's the premise. The Kingdom of Dor, known for its delicious soup, has been beneath a dark cloud since a rat fell into the queen's soup bowl and she died of fright. After this tragedy, both rats and soup are banned, which somehow makes the kingdom dark and not rainy. A tiny mouse named Despereaux needs to set things right.

This all sounds reasonable enough, and had the screenwriter, Gary Ross ("Seabiscuit") taken a more straightforward route toward the light, the story might have soared. As it is, it takes a more circuitous path -- not unlike, say, a rodent hole. It's a shame, because the original book was so very artful. What's that they say in the dungeon? Oh yes... rats!

What's in It for Kids

The book, which is written in several parts and leaps from one time frame to another, must have been difficult to adapt. The result is muddy enough that a primary theme -- of how suffering and sadness can turn people to darkness -- will completely escape young viewers.

The hero, Despereaux, is a classic misfit -- he's small, but he has huge ears. He's unable to muster the fear that the other mice live by. Instead, he dreams of being a gallant knight living in service to the princess he loves. And so he gets himself banished to the dungeon, a fate no other mouse has survived.

Of course, the audience needs to wait quite a few minutes even to meet Despereaux. First, we are introduced to a rat named Roscuro, who has been chased to the dungeon after the unfortunate incident with the queen and her soup. Roscuro doesn't like it down there. He won't eat from the garbage heap. He doesn't care for the gladiator-style games played with a captive cat. But a villain with no apparent motivation is still bent on turning him to the dark side.

The story itself is jerky, making clumsy leaps from one world to another, using labels to identify "The Mouse World" and "The Rat World." (The latter looks an awful lot like the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland.)

Despereaux and Roscuro are meant to be parallel characters. They play their contrasting roles much more sharply in the book than the movie, though. For the longest time, Roscuro just seems like an extra hero.

Another set of characters -- Princess Pea and her servant girl Miggory Sow -- also serve as parallels. Both are unhappy, having lost their mothers. Miggory Sow dreams of being a princess but she's an abused servant with no beauty or prospects.

The contrasts in the paired characters work a lot better on the page than the screen. Kids who haven't read the book might be confused about why Miggory Sow and Roscuro suddenly do bad things, even with Sigourney Weaver's helpful narrator explaining what's going on in their heads.

While the narration is straight from the book, which addresses the reader directly, the characters have been altered and watered-down enough that even with the labeling, it's going to confuse plenty of young viewers.

Though "Despereaux" is rated G, there are also be some moments that could frighten small children. There's a big, scary cat, and the rats threaten do something awful to the princess (something straight out of "Gulliver's Travels.") The violence from the book -- tail amputations and mutilated ears -- has been removed, though.

What's in It for Parents

The movie has two strengths -- a talented cast and visuals. Artistically, the movie blends the really specific textures that are so common in animation these days with stylized character rendering that echoes the work of Rubens and Van Dyck. Be sure to check out the nose on Princess Pea -- it's freakishly long, but the proportion works.

Likewise, the cast is solid. Matthew Broderick plays Despereaux and Dustin Hoffman, Roscuro, with Emma Watson as the princess while Tracy Ullman as Miggery Sow.

The biggest weakness here: Apparently no one could agree on a single European accent for the assorted people and animals in the castle. You hear everything, it seems, but the French that would have made the named "Despereaux" make sense. Mon dieu! This isn't something kids will care about, of course. But would it have been so hard to keep that intact in the adaptation?

You have to wonder whether the goal here was simply to capitalize on the popularity of the book, which won a Newbery award, without sweating too many of the details that gave it much of its quirky charm.

It's by no means a bad movie. Plenty of people will enjoy their time with the brave mouse, the soup eaters, and perhaps even the vegetable man, who performs heroics while wearing a pot on his head. And this could be the only movie in history where things get better as soon as the really bad storm starts. So that's unusual, at least.

But in a really good year of animated family movies, "Despereaux" doesn't quite squeak into the top tier. For anyone who really loved the book, this is such the disappointment.

Read More Reviews on MSN Movies

Martha Brockenbrough is MSN's Cinemama, for the Parents' Movie Guide. She is also the author of Things That Make Us [Sic], a guide to funny bad grammar published by St. Martin's press. She also blogs about family life for Cozi.com, and writes an educational humor column for Encarta. Check out her Web site.

Sound off: Comment on this story | Also: Features archive